


State of Disrepair

by Viridian5



Series: Things Once Linked [6]
Category: Andromeda, due South
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, M/M, Reincarnation, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-05
Updated: 2001-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:26:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it also makes reconnection more difficult. A Things Once Linked story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	State of Disrepair

**Author's Note:**

> #2 in the Lifting the Long Night subseries of Things Once Linked. A direct sequel to "[There and Back Again](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4434)," though at one point it references "[Bring Yourself](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4427)."
> 
> Spoilers: _due South_: "The Ladies' Man" and subtle echoes of a few other episodes.  
> _Andromeda_: "Angel Dark, Demon Bright," "The Mathematics of Tears," and "Harper 2.0." Bitty, inconsequential ones for other first season episodes.
> 
> For Kass, who kept asking for truffles. Read-through by LaT and Kass.

From out of the darkened maintenance tunnel, a voice called, "If you're looking for Seamus Zelazny Harper, unsung hero of the Battle of Witchhead, he's not here." The bitterness and self-mockery in Harper's voice dimmed some of Dylan's anger.

But not all of it. He felt so betrayed by this young man who'd flouted his orders and attempted mass slaughter. Though later on they'd been forced to mass slaughter as a crew, and to do it to far more people, with all of it happening by some greater design. They had been destined to go back in time and stop those 1,000 Nietzschean ships from crushing the remnants of the Commonwealth any further than history had already said it had been. Their actions had made the status quo of his crew's time period possible. This had all already happened. Dylan's guilt and anger served a purpose.

It provided no comfort at all.

He kept his voice emotionless as he said, "I'm coming in."

"Thanks for the announcement, though it's not like I'm going to kill you out of surprise at seeing you. I think we killed enough people for one day."

Despite the provocation, Dylan said nothing, just went into the tunnel. He'd already spoken to the others, saving Harper for last. He couldn't understand. Jovial, often silly Harper didn't seem like the type who could contemplate cold-blooded destruction on such a scale.

Except that Dylan had seen traces of a more ruthless side before.

Harper wasn't supposed to be a killer. He couldn't be.

Only the lights on the machinery currently provided any illumination in the dim tunnel, highlighting some spiky blond hair, one eye, a cheekbone, and a patch of blue and of gray from Harper's shirts. Red blinked on and off at his cheek. He was seated, leaning his head back against the wall. That one visible eye had a haunted look.

Dylan felt a stab of mean-spirited happiness. Harper _should_ be sorry for what they'd done.

Harper had designed the fusion catalyst and their kill method and, doing so, disobeyed his direct orders.

"Amazing, isn't it, how Trance just happened to screw her slipstream piloting up to take us to that moment in time where we were supposed to be. And isn't it totally coincidental how she found and ratted out my plan to you so I wouldn't blow my wad and the element of surprise too soon, before the other 1,000 ships arrived for us to destroy," Harper said.

"I know."

"Are you going to do anything about it?"

"I'm considering my options and keeping her under closer observation." Dylan sat down across from Harper and put steel into his voice. "You flouted my orders." His whole new crew did that continually. How could he reinstate the rule of law and order if his own crew went renegade on him time after time?

"From what Tyr tells us, I was meant to."

"That's not the point."

"Your orders were wrong."

"My orders were my orders."

"They were _wrong_." Harper's one visible eye narrowed at him, glaring. "You wanted us to run, when we could have done something, made a difference. We had the power to make things better. You don't know what things were like when the Commonwealth died. How can you know? You weren't there! You took a powder during the nastiest 300 years in recent history. You were gone, and the rest of us had to go on as best we could."

"That wasn't my fault! You think it doesn't kill me thinking that maybe I could have made a difference? Everyone and everything I loved died while I was frozen in time." Again, Harper had thrown "you weren't here" at him as if Harper had suffered personally from his 303-year absence, which made no sense whatsoever.

"I know. I know it sucks to be you, but I can't _know_. Not really. But you come walking back into history with no real idea of what happened, but you still think you know best."

"It wasn't our place to get involved." Except that here it had been. They'd been destined to go back in time and do what they'd done.

"You always get involved! When we don't want you to, when it's stupid to, you get involved." Harper's anger seemed to be building, intense and cold. "It's bad 300 years later. I don't want to imagine what it was like when the Magog first came or the Nietzscheans made their first major invasion. All those fat and happy citizens who only knew peace and prosperity under the Commonwealth, the sweetest and juiciest prey possible, getting their heads handed to them. You can't know. When I tell you that the Magog invaded Earth and raped, ate, and murdered masses of people or that the Nietzcheans murdered, pillaged, and ran Earth with an iron fist, those are just words to you, maybe even word pictures. They're my life to me, what I remember and experienced. I have memories I wish I could rip out of my head. This is what the Battle of Witchhead means to me."

"I can see all of that, but what you did... tampering with my ship, disobeying my orders, planning an act that would have repercussions for us all, mutiny.... I expected better of you," Dylan snarled. He couldn't let sympathy sidetrack him, not now.

Harper winced as if Dylan had struck him, but said, "You and your quest for law and order and justice. You say you want to use the Andromeda Ascendant to make a difference, but there we were and you wanted to do nothing, just leave."

"And you couldn't let us."

"Damned right I couldn't. I had the knowledge and I had the opportunity."

"You also had a clip where you expounded on what a hero you'd be. Rommie found it."

Harper snorted. "Please. I was psyching myself up. If the Commonwealth never got its ass kicked there, do you think they'd care if they found some clip floating in space in which a guy who doesn't exist yet claimed that he was responsible for the destruction of ships they never saw arrive?"

"We didn't know what effect we'd have on the future, which is actually our present."

"What we know happened was terrible. I figured it couldn't be worse than that. And if we created another timeline, well, maybe I spared somebody some of the horror. I accepted the thought that I would remember everything anyway."

"You would remember killing thousands of people."

Harper swallowed. "Yes. I would, and I would live with it. You wouldn't have to."

"This is my ship, you're part of my crew, and you are my responsibility. It would be my fault."

"But who could have guessed I'd ever do such a thing? I'm so harmless. When you're harmless, you're beneath the Nietzscheans' notice. They have contempt for you, but they had contempt for all of us anyway. You learn to show that you're smart enough to be useful but not so smart that you might threaten anybody. If you look young, your own people put you closer to the head of the food line and try to give you someplace warmer and drier to sleep. If you can fix things, it makes you indispensable and gets you an even better place. If you're funny... well, it helps people get through. If you can use a gun...." Harper shook his head. "Don't feel bad about not knowing. Beka doesn't either. She's spacer, has been her whole life, and I never told her very much about what Earth's like. She knows, but not from personal eyewitness stuff, so she doesn't _know_. You don't find many Earth people out here; most of them never leave the Motherwell.

"All those ships.... We maintained the status quo today... 300 years ago, damn, I hate time travel... but it would have been so much worse if we hadn't chopped the odds down so much. We came as close to winning as we could. In our place, the Nietzscheans would have slaughtered us without a thought. They _will_ slaughter thousands, millions, soon after that battle. It's history; it already happened. This is rightful revenge. No, this is _justice_. I've dreamed of having a chance to do this kind of damage to those bastards." But Harper shuddered. "So why do I hate myself so much?"

"Have you ever... killed before?" Dylan wanted to touch Harper out of some confused thought that his engineer couldn't lie to him while under his hand but, remembering how far he'd gone the last time, he held back.

"Self-defense." Harper didn't say how many. "Nothing like this. Not... 100,000 people. You're a soldier. How do you live with yourself?"

"You have no choice."

Harper nodded. "It's like everything else then."

Dylan felt immeasurable relief over Harper's reaction to what they'd done, which showed that he wasn't a killer by nature or inclination. "Time helps. A little."

"Which time?" Harper laughed bitterly. "Think how much it would suck to be killed by someone who wasn't even born yet." He shuddered again.

Dylan sat down next to Harper and was surprised when Harper, still shaking a bit, leaned his head on his shoulder and curled into his side a bit. Dylan put his arm around him in a comforting, gathering-in grip. It felt right. It felt... familiar.

And this time he wouldn't let it go so far. It would stay comforting. He wouldn't start to stroke Harper again.

Dylan felt Harper's shudders and breathing slow, which made him feel better himself. They sat together in silence for a few moments before Harper said, "I don't understand why you're still here. You could have stayed behind, 13 months after you got stuck in that black hole instead of 303 years. We could have tried to go back through the slipstream in the Eureka Maru if Rommie gave us the reversed settings. You could have been home."

"I wanted to stay. I can't help thinking I could make a difference, make things better, but that's the whole problem. I know too much; I could change too much. It's not safe having me or Andromeda there. Besides, there were no guarantees that the Andromeda could use the reversed settings to get back, and we went through in the Andromeda. If the Maru tried it, you could have been lost. Or you might have made it back to your own time to find everything completely different but your memories would be the same. You could have had doppelgangers wandering around. I have a responsibility to protect and take care of my crew."

"Responsibility?"

"Yeah."

"You have any booze around?"

Harper's hair kept brushing against Dylan's neck, distracting him. He needed to move. "Fortunately, yes."

"Good. You have the responsibility to get me drunk for my own good. Do you acknowledge that responsibility?"

Nothing would happen. Dylan wouldn't allow it. "I do."

"Good. Lead the way."

  


* * *

//There is no world outside the vehicle we're sitting in. As we sit together in the cold darkness, I hear the most wretched sound, and I realize that Harper is sobbing, shaking with it, as he sits next to me. The dog behind us in the vehicle whines in empathy.

//I'm not sure if the sobbing comes out of the sheer weight of the emotions he's been struggling under, or if he does it in front of me as a sign of his trust of me. Probably both.

//I want to take Harper in my arms, soothe him through touch and words, but I can't. Not yet. Instead, I reach out with one hand, laying my arm across his shoulders to show that I care. Greatly daring, I rub his shoulders a little. I don't look at him, trying to give him some privacy in his grief and guilt.

//But the shoulders beneath my arm and hand don't feel like Harper's. I sneak a glance to the side and see spiky blond hair but not the _right_ spiky blond hair. My brief glimpse shows me an older, taller, more angular looking man.

//Yet this is Harper. I know it. This is a dream, and I've had dreams before where people I never met stand in for people I know.

//I'm not a demonstrative man, and I try to let him know through touch that he may bear some blame for what happened, but it is not all his. He made a rookie mistake, but a man he trusted took advantage of that mistake to put an innocent woman on Death Row. Where it counted, Harper fought to find the truth, and he freed her just in time.

//But we're both all too aware of the years she lost.

//If we hadn't become involved, the state would have executed her, but Harper had seen himself as the killer-to-be. When I told him he wouldn't kill anyone, he replied, "Why not? That's what I do." While referring to her impending death, he said, "You talk to me in two days, I guarantee you I've killed someone."

//I don't know what he would have done to himself if we hadn't succeeded in saving her life.

//This is a dream based on a memory, and I know that we will go back to his quarters. Eventually, worn out by the past few days and his emotions, he'll fall asleep on the couch with his head on my leg as I stroke his hair, trying to soothe his pain away. Even further ahead, I'll finally tell him how I feel, and I'll never be afraid to do more than lay an arm across his shoulders again.

//But right now, I still can't bring myself to hold him.//

Dylan blindly reached out for the person who should be with him. His partner. His hand hit only empty space. Head pounding, he opened his eyes to find himself alone in bed on top of his covers, still dressed in his uniform, now rumpled, with no indent or scent of anyone else with him and only his hangover for company.

He was alone. And haunted by the feeling that he shouldn't be.

Haunted by the feeling that he didn't _have_ to be.

He knew that. It was an old lesson. And of course he was alone right now. He hadn't gotten them drunk in the hopes of seducing Harper or being seduced, that was for sure. That would have been tawdry, irresponsible, and predatory on his part.

Trying to give it a gloss of tenderness through that dream would have only made him delusional as well as a danger to his subordinates.

But through the rancid fuzz in his brain, Dylan could remember Harper drinking him under the table, then helping him to his room. Then... Harper standing there at the foot of his bed for a little while, watching him, looking confused, before leaving.

"Dylan, are you finished with your masochism?" Rommie asked way too loudly.

"Yeah. Definitely. Could you synthesize me a hangover cure?"

"Have you learned your lesson?"

"Yes. You have no idea how well I've learned my lesson." Whatever it was, as long as she helped him stop the pain. "Just give me the cure."

  


* * *

Dylan had to laugh at himself. He liked Harper and felt an attraction, so of course he'd avoided him for anything other than life-and-death matters for weeks. His elaborate avoidance would have been understandable--though reprehensible--if they'd woken up in bed together, but Dylan had come to alone the next morning. The dream had been weird but hardly a reason to ostracize his engineer.

Ridiculous of him. Having seen that it was ridiculous, today he'd set out to do something about it.

It also gave Dylan the opportunity to see how Harper was doing days after the attacks on him. The data archive that had been jammed into Harper's head had dangerously overworked his nervous system and given him insomnia, screaming nightmares, and a terror of Rev Bem. Then Jeger had tortured him with a laser probe for a while....

Dylan had been so engrossed in the mystery of what was causing Harper's odd behavior that he hadn't shown the kind of support to his engineer that he should have at the time. It didn't help that the attraction had actually held him back, made him afraid to get too close.

Which made the attraction a bad idea.

Dylan leaned against the maintenance tunnel's wall and asked Harper's back, "So, how old are you?" He'd been speaking mostly to Harper's back for the last hour or so, when he wasn't handing tools over to help his engineer's work along. Harper had found his idea of downtime to be pathetic and told him so about 58 minutes ago.

"You want to know because...?" A tool-holding hand waved in lazy circles in his direction, as if trying to pull more information from Dylan that way.

Dylan tried not to read too much into the set and flex of Harper's shoulders, one, because his loose, untucked top shirt made it harder to see anything and two, because Dylan didn't want to get too deeply involved in watching Harper's body. Establishing a habit there would be a bad idea.

"I want to know. I'm curious." Though, attraction or no, it was very easy for him to talk to Harper. Beka too. Sometimes they felt so familiar.... He wondered about that.

"I'm younger than _you_."

"Everyone's younger than me. I'm over 340 years old."

"Exactly."

"It's not my fault that I was frozen in time at the edge of a black hole for 303 years."

Maybe the fact that he could sound so flip about it meant that he'd started to deal with what had happened to him.

Not really. He just didn't have a choice.

"But it's mine? Sonic screwdriver."

"Sonic-- Wait a minute. There's no such thing."

"Sure there is."

"Harper."

"Okay, it does exist, but it's a cultural reference so old that I'm the only one who cares anymore. Not a real tool."

"Did I give you anything you actually asked for?"

"You handed me my sandwich. And you knew what a 'Sparky' was when I asked for it."

Harper's favorite cola, a brand that hadn't existed 300 years ago. He had enough cans around his workstation that Dylan would know. "Great."

"You couldn't have given me the last two if you tried. I asked you for a smeg-catcher and a sonic screwdriver. I should have stuck with the names of real tools, but I got punchy."

"Which still means I handed you three wrong things before that. Why didn't you say anything? You just took them."

"I have all the tools I need for this job either in my tool belt or next to me. But thanks for sending over the soda and sandwich. Don't look like that."

"You can't see what I look like."

"You have that 'Harper!' look on your face. I get that so often that I can tell without having to see you."

"I'm sure you do."

"It's an aura thing."

"If I had an aura, which I don't, you still wouldn't be able to see that either with your back turned."

"I can feel it."

"Right."

"I can tell that you're distracted, but I figured that you'd still want to feel useful too, like you were making a contribution. Talking to me is enough, really, but you're the multi-tasking type. Right now you're chatting with me and checking 'bond with your engineer' off your list."

That sounded terrible. "I'm not that cold-blooded and calculating, I swear."

"I'm not saying you do it in an evil criminal mastermind way. You just want to get things done, which is cool, but sometimes it's good for you to do something that has no other reason for being done except that you like it. I mean, I surf. Unless the Maru or Andromeda filled with water and the only way to save us all somehow depended on my ability to balance on a board in water, surfing isn't really useful. But I like it. Not that it's not good to stay busy. I don't want you to think I mean you should goof off. Staying busy means you don't think about things you can't fix in favor of fixing what you can get at."

Dylan marveled as he heard what sounded like actual information slipping out amongst the patter. He decided not to call too much attention to it to prevent Harper from becoming self-conscious and stopping. "You like people talking to you while you work?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I need quiet, but conversation is good other times. Then again, Beka was the only person I could stand for it from the Maru. Rev gets into big discussions on The Way, while Trance is so endlessly perky that sometimes I want to knock her out. Just for a little while. Rommie sticks around now and then, and it's fun to flirt with her and have her shoot down all my fragile hopes and dreams every time, but she can be distracting. Tyr comes by sometimes and suggests backdoors I could put into the systems so I could take control any time I felt like it, by which he means that he could take control."

"Please tell me you're joking." Tyr was fairly dependable in self-interested treacheries.

"If it makes you feel better, yeah, I'm joking. I don't take any of his suggestions. Beka has some great music she lends to me sometimes, though she swears that her brother swiped her really good stuff."

"Beka used to hang around while you worked?"

"Salvage and shipping alternates between feverish overwork and boring, scutwork downtime. You know, days and days and days where you had no excuse not to do the dull, grungy maintenance stuff that makes you want to kill yourself to escape the tedium. Not like the Andromeda, where people start shooting at us or invading us every few days. The Maru's her baby, and she liked to keep up with its nanny. She doesn't have as much time now."

"And the Andromeda Ascendant isn't her baby."

"Well, it isn't. She has to ask you for everything first here."

"Unless she doesn't bother."

"Well, yeah." Harper gave Dylan a wry look over his shoulder. "And now you're making notes in your mental notebook. Something like: 'If you let Seamus Harper talk long enough, he may tell you something useful.' I guess it's inevitable that something with actual informational value would sneak through now and then."

Dylan could be offended at the notebook comment, no matter how jokingly meant, later. Did they really think that of him? "How's your neck doing?" They'd decided not to use any kind of accelerated healing devices on it out of concern for what any such treatment might do to Harper's hardware. Instead, Harper used a very low-tech salve.

Harper's fingers automatically went to the still reddened skin around his data port socket. "Doesn't hurt much anymore, and I don't sleep on that side anyway."

"What about mentally?"

"There don't seem to be any bad long-term effects from having the Commonwealth's database temporarily shoved into my brain. Or from Jeger stabbing a laser probe into my port." He smiled. "But thanks for asking."

Harper pulled suddenly, and what looked like a motherboard came out in his hands with amazing speed, making Dylan's heart rise into his throat. Then he realized that Harper was watching, mouth twitching to hold back the laughter.

Which meant that everything was fine. "That wasn't funny."

"Oh yes, it was. The look on your face.... You're much more easygoing than Beka. It took me five minutes to convince her to peel her fingers off my neck when I did something like this in the Maru." Harper set the board down carefully, made some adjustments, and reinserted it. "Ow! Rommie!" He sucked on his fingers.

Rommie's hologram popped up. "That was only a brief shock. Next time I won't be so gentle. You will not use me to upset Dylan."

"I didn't hurt you. I would never do anything that would threaten you."

"That's true."

"You have to admit that the look on his face was funny."

Rommie's avatar body turned the corner and said, "I don't have to admit that. But it was." Her hologram nodded its head in agreement, then disappeared.

Dylan shook his head as he watched the collusion forming. "Harper, stop corrupting my ship."

"But it's so much fun."

"Rommie, you have my full permission to shock him any time you feel like it."

"Really, Dylan?" Rommie looked murderously happy at the thought.

"Hey!" Harper protested. "Engineer abuse! She'll take you up on that too."

"I know. What a shame."

Harper ducked behind Dylan. Rommie said, "Harper, I'm the ship, remember? I'm everywhere. Getting out of my avatar's line of sight won't do you any good."

"I can still use Dylan as a human shield."

Dylan shook his head but couldn't shake his human shadow. He could feel Harper's fingers clench in his uniform jacket to hold on. "Somehow my last crew had more respect for their captain."

But seeing what looked like laughter in Rommie's avatar's eyes made it all right. The AI seemed to be becoming more human all the time lately, and a great deal of it could no doubt be attributed to his new crew. Not a single member of the High Guard would have thought to play hide and seek with a ship's AI.

Then again, none of the High Guard would have been trying to make it look like Dylan had devil horns for the amusement of the ship's AI. Though it would have been a more successful effort if Harper had been taller, giving him a better reach.

Harper and the others weren't like his former crew at all, but sometimes that wasn't such a bad thing.

  


* * *

Harper couldn't believe that their new chips had burnt out. They'd been rooked for sure by that dealer. He'd have to keep an eye on the rest of the batch, since they didn't have enough backups in stock to replace the whole lot yet.

He wondered if they could get even with the bastard later on. He'd have to ask Dylan about it, since Dylan was the master of devious, passive-aggressive vengeance.

He wasn't looking for excuses to talk to Dylan. Alone. In private. Over something non-dire. For the first time in how long.

Okay, if the rest of the chips went bad too soon it could be very dire, but at least they didn't have anyone shooting at them for once.

"So." Beka crouched, grinning, next to him. "Dylan likes you." She radiated glee.

"Of course he likes me. He's blinded by that special Harper wit and charm as well as my devastating good looks."

"No, I mean he _likes_ you."

Argh. "If this is going to lead to us putting on our fuzzy 'jammies, braiding each other's hair, and talking about how dreamy he is, count me out, okay?"

"You're not surprised by it."

"I mentioned the wit, charm, and good looks."

"You know what I mean."

"I figured it out. Nobody's been so interested in me in my life, so attraction was the likeliest culprit, yeah. But he won't go for me."

"Why not? We're not good enough for him?"

He couldn't help smiling at how pissed off she was. It helped that she looked like she wanted to rearrange Dylan's face for the insult. "Cool your jets; it's not like that. No, he won't do it because he sees me as his subordinate, which to him means that any move he makes would be taking advantage of me. He also figures that if things go bad, it could get awkward since we have to work so closely together."

"You know this, how?"

"I'm familiar with his type."

"From where?"

He couldn't explain it; he just knew. "He won't go for you for the same reason." It wasn't going to happen between him and Dylan, not with Dylan's ideas of what was appropriate. Harper had accepted it and moved on.

One good thing, maybe the only good thing, about his past was that it put things in perspective. It made a case of the unrequiteds seem kind of trivial and small by comparison. Why dwell?

Beka made a dismissive noise. "He's cute, but I'll survive. He's too... unsullied or something. So you're saying that he won't get involved with anyone on the crew. Does he think he's ever going to have sex again before he dies?"

"Probably not."

"That's just sad. Speaking of sad... do _you_ like _him_?"

She _would_ ask. "Are we passing notes in class here?"

"You do! You poor bastard." Evil glee just about rolled off her.

Sometimes it sucked that she knew him that well. "No way."

"You're blushing a little. It's so cute, Harper."

"Bite me. You're the one who was ready to jump Tyr, so you shouldn't talk."

"You've seen Tyr."

"Yeah, he has that hunky, muscular thing going, but he's, like, inert or something. No spark. It'd be like making it with a sculpted rock."

"Depends on the size of the rock."

"Thank you ever so much for that mental image."

"It's not like I'd keep him around to talk to. Oh, God, I'm imagining what Nietzschean pillow talk would be like, and I'm frightening myself."

"Personally, I think you narrowly avoided a fate worse than death when he turned you down for not being the same species."

"Different species, my ass," Beka muttered. "Like he's not just some genetically-engineered, hopped-up human."

"Think about it. Everything's about personal survival and reproduction for Nietzcheans. He'd be expecting you to pop out little Tyrs for him if you two did get it on."

"Like anyone needs more than one."

"There you go."

But he'd diverted her from her main topic only for a moment. "You know, you could pursue Dylan if you really want him."

"You're that desperate for entertainment?"

"Hell, yeah, but I want you to be happy too."

"You want me to settle down and stop being such a slut?"

Beka coughed, then said, "Don't deny it. I see the way you wear your tool belt slung low on your hips. You want to be a slut, but your targets aren't cooperating."

Harper stuck his tongue out at her. "Oh yeah, the tool belt, the baggy pants, the way I spike my hair, I'm asking for it. And the 'targets' like it just fine."

"He's better than a lot of people you've been into over the years."

"Do you have some kind of ulterior motive here, some advantage you'd get out of it?"

"You're nuts."

Harper smirked. "You pimped me out on Borealis."

"No way. That Perseid wanted to borrow you just to talk for a while."

"Yeah, 'talk.' That's what they always say. How much did you make off him?"

Beka smiled darkly. "He tipped really well. What _did_ you do for him?"

"We talked quantum mechanics for a few hours, so get your mind out of the gutter. But he kept eyeing my data port lustfully the whole time."

"See, you're a slut. Leaving that socket on your neck uncovered for all the world to look at...."

"Oh, shut up."

"No, I can see you and Dylan together. Almost. We need to work on your fashion sense first."

How did he guess that things would head in this direction? "What's wrong with my clothes?"

"Nothing... if you're a portside trash picker."

"You're a fashion fascist. I wouldn't look good in your Amazon dominatrix wear. Or fit in it."

"I don't have a corset or a high heel anywhere. These are comfortable."

"And skintight."

"Purely coincidental." Beka gave him an appraising look. "My blacks and blues would look good on you, though."

"You're going to punch me?"

She mock-punched him in the arm. It still hurt. "Maybe silver too. Get you out of the dull gray range and into something peppier. Though not as peppy as your red cargo pants, which are way _too_ peppy. We could give it a try."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Less baggy would be an improvement too. That tight charcoal-colored long-sleeved shirt you wore while we were dealing with the Consensus of Parts was _nice_. Actually, your clothes have improved lately in general. More sober colors too. Are you trying to get Dylan to notice you?" Her smile was all teeth, wide, blinding, and deadly.

No way he was going to tell Beka that Dylan had already "noticed" him... and run away. He'd never hear the end of it. "I thought we were trying to make me less of a slut."

"Oh, yeah, but look at the uniforms Dylan and Rommie wear. Or Tyr's outfit. Or Trance's clothes. Even Rev shows himself off once in a while when he gets tired of that robe."

"Who _wants_ to see Rev's body? And you are my pimp, aren't you?"

"I want you to be happy."

How many times had the road to hell started with those words?

  


* * *

"Come in," Dylan said, then raised his eyebrow as Harper almost fell into the room, as if something had propelled him forward. Harper directed an obscene gesture and murderous look behind him into the hallway, then straightened his clothing and self out, ending by giving himself a little neck crack that seemed to relax him a bit.

He wore cargo pants, boots, and tool belt, all within the usual, but with a body-hugging shirt. The brown of the belt provided a break from the black and charcoal of his outfit. Harper had been wearing clothing that fit... closer lately, and it flattered him.

Dylan did not notice how Harper dressed.

"Can I kill Beka?" Harper asked. "You wouldn't miss her much, right?"

"I can't condone murder."

"You won't be able to tell that it's not an accident."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"If you're kidding, then it's fine as long as you make it look like an accident and don't let me know when it's coming."

"Thanks, Dylan. You're a pal."

"Since you're just kidding about getting permission to kill Beka, what did you really want to see me about?"

Harper took a handful of chips out of one of his pockets and handed them to Dylan, standing next to him, almost breathing on him. "We need replacements for the replacements, because these crap chips have burned out already. Reorx screwed us. The whole lot's bad, but the others are lasting a little longer. We have to leave those in because we don't have enough to replace them, but we need to get some good ones pronto."

So another grifter had taken advantage of them. The level of graft and corruption they kept running into still surprised Dylan, but he knew that far too many people reveled in the lack of any kind of governing body looking over their shoulders. "All of them?"

"All of them. Some worse than others. But at least we have a warning. It would have really sucked if they'd blown while we were in slipstream." Harper made a small explosion noise and flexed his fingers in pantomime. "So, are we going to clean his clock? Who knows how many people he's hurt by being this greedy."

"We're not enforcers or some kind of police force."

"True. We just have the power to make things better when most people don't."

"You're subtle."

Still far too close, still breathing on him, Harper said, "I'm told it's one of my best qualities."

Too close. Rattled, Dylan asked, "Do you have any concept of personal space?"

Harper backed off a bit but said, "Not really. Never stayed anyplace where people could afford it. No room."

Dylan would _not_ feel guilty about that.

But now he knew that Harper breathed on him out of lifelong habit, not as some kind of flirtatious thing. Not that Harper didn't seem to flirt with everyone in his own weird way.

This kind of thinking was getting him nowhere.

If Harper meant nothing by it, there'd be no harm in getting breathed on. Dylan stepped toward Harper and was surprised when Harper moved back and away. Harper looked hesitant and seemed to be trapped inside his own head.

"Mr. Harper?"

Harper snapped to. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Is there anything else?" Everything would be better if they could resolve this tension between them somehow, but mentally, they never seemed to be in the same place at the same time to do it.

Harper kept backing away as he put the chips back into his pocket. "Uh, no. No. Just the chips. I can go now."

Confused, Dylan grabbed for him. Harper almost managed to evade his grip but didn't make it. Harper went rigid, and his eyes closed, as if he were trying to stay still, trying to stop the instinctive attack back.

"Harper, what the hell is going on?"

"You don't know? 'Cause I don't know either, and it would be nice if someone knew."

"You have to know more than I do." Dylan felt the tremble of muscles straining to move in the arm under his fingers. Harper was trying to stay so still....

"Says who?" Harper opened his eyes. "You ever get the feeling like we're slightly mismatched, like our parts don't connect exactly right?" Harper smirked, a big relief to Dylan. "Okay, you get that look off your face and your mind out of the gutter right now."

"I wasn't thinking anything like that." Liar.

"I meant like puzzle pieces, you pervert. The tabs and the indents that should interlock. We're almost but not quite, and it's driving me nuts!"

"What?"

"You ever feel like it should be easier for us to mesh, and it almost is but not quite? Like I've done this before and should have some idea of what I'm doing. It's worse than if we didn't mesh at all."

How bizarre to hear Harper articulate something that had been nagging at Dylan for some time. It made no sense, but making no sense didn't stop it from being the way he felt.

Harper shook his head. "Maybe it's because we're not... contemporaries, you know?"

"No, I don't know."

"Of course you do. You keep trying to relate to me like I'm from your time, and I do the same thing from my end." Harper looked miserable beneath his usual cheery mask.

Dylan didn't ask himself how he could see that, and he didn't stop to think. Acting on instinct, he pulled Harper into a tight hug.

Harper squirmed and twitched. "Guess the Commonwealth's military really was different, huh?" he asked, his voice muffled by Dylan's chest.

"Will you just let me hug you?" Dylan asked, frustrated. He wanted to see if this worked. If it did, then he could justify it.

"Okay, sir. Sorry, sir."

Dylan mock-slapped the back of Harper's head, more of a brisk sweep than anything else, gaining him a laugh. Harper stopped fighting it. Dylan hadn't even realized that that was what he'd been doing until he stopped. Harper turned his head to make himself comfortable, moved closer, and melted in.

It felt right being wrapped around one another like this. Dylan set his hand at the back of Harper's head, basking in the warmth and the stillness. Because Harper was still, but in a relaxed way, not rigid still as he'd been earlier.

Success. And this felt really good.... Dylan realized that he didn't know how long it had been since _he'd_ been held, even disregarding those 303 years that had passed him by in a second.

He didn't know how long they stood there like that, but eventually he realized that Harper was rocking him a little bit. Usually Harper just about crackled, but now he just felt steady, peaceful.

Dozing?

Dylan rubbed the back of that spiky blond head. "Harper?"

"Mmmm." Harper rubbed his face against Dylan's chest.

"Harper."

"Mmm?" The regularly scheduled Harper returned with a jolt of crackling force, just about exploding backward out of Dylan's arms. "Ah. That was... nice. Really nice. I have to go now." And he was gone so fast that he should have left speed lines behind him.

Dylan stood there staring for a moment. He'd have to keep this in mind. Of course, it'd be nice if he could figure out what this meant.

_He_ felt a lot better though.

  


* * *

Stupid. Stupid, stupid.... No, beyond stupid, so far beyond that he made stupid look smart. "I am such a dork," Harper muttered to himself.

Nice? Oh yeah. Really, very nice. Weird, but nice.

"I am so doomed," Harper muttered. To his surprise, Beka trotted up to him. "Were you waiting near the door or something?" Harper asked.

"Nah, that'd be gauche," she said. "I had Rommie tell me when you left."

"Great."

"That wasn't really quick but it wasn't too prolonged either. I hope for your sake that Dylan doesn't shoot that fast, so I guess it didn't work."

"Hey, I'm not easy, you know. What, no comeback on that?"

"I have so many possible lines of attack that I can't decide on just one."

Harper opened his door but wasn't fast enough to stop Beka from slipping through in front of him. "He hugged me," Harper said. It had even been a really good hug, but confusing as all hell. A "nice" hug. Could somebody just shoot him now?

"He hugged you?"

"I know, I know, if it had been you you would have ripped off his clothes and mounted him, but that's just not me."

Beka smiled. "For a guy who doesn't get any, you sure paint some pretty word pictures."

"Hey, when are you getting any? Not lately, I'm thinking."

"Trance."

No way. Son of a.... "What? When?"

"While we were staying with my traitorous bastard of an honorary uncle."

"Damn. How was she?"

"Let's just say that the tail is very useful." Beka's eyes went vague and dreamy. "She's very sweet."

"Well, yeah. But nothing more since you got back?"

Beka smirked. "Everybody knows everything about everybody else here, and she likes some privacy. Now stop trying to distract me. Spill your guts."

"_That_ makes me want to talk."

"Harper."

"Fine, fine." Harper fell back onto his bed. "I panicked, okay?"

"He hugged you because you panicked, or he hugged you and then you panicked? C'mon, it's going to take forever to get the story out of you at this rate."

"I was putting the moves on him--subtly, okay?--but he backed off. But then he came forward. And. I. Panicked." Then his hands were moving but words weren't coming out of his mouth, always an indicator to people who knew him that he was getting too emotional. Events had left him too lost to even talk, something he did the way other people breathed, but he couldn't fix himself. Finally he said, "It was too important to mess up, so I freaked out. Then he hugged me."

Beka fell back onto the bed next to him. "Important, huh? This is great!"

"I'm not seeing it."

"I thought this would just be about sex. Okay, so far sex has nothing to do with it--"

"I'm working on it!"

"When you're not panicking and freaking out. But this, this is romance. Love or something."

"Or something."

"Maybe sex will even come into it if you don't spazz out next time."

"Hey, last time he spazzed out!" Oh. Damn. Thanks so much, wounded pride.

She elbowed him. "Last time?"

"I need some sense of mystery. Besides, I don't have to tell you anything."

"You just keep thinking that, Seamus. Last time. Hmm."

"That's really annoying."

"I know. Okay, so you alternate between him making a move, freaking out, and backing off and you making a move, freaking out, and backing off."

"Looks like."

"Unless you just hug."

"That wasn't just a hug."

"Ooookay. I'll have to take your word on that. Anyway, if you want to get some action the rest of the human race understands as action, maybe next time you can pretend you're me. No spazz, no foul."

"Except that if I'm pretending to be you I really don't care and that negates the whole point."

"I don't think you could play me that well."

"I could play you in my sleep. I just wouldn't get the easy respect you get on account of you looking like a tall, pumped-up hardcase."

"Was that a compliment or an insult?"

"There's not going to be another time." It was just too scary feeling so out of control and led around by something he didn't understand.

Beka put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "Maybe the hug was his first step. Look, I'll try to see how easily I can get him to hug me. Ask him to give me some sugar."

Harper snickered. "If you ask that, he'll never touch you."

"Okay, maybe I won't put it like that. If he treats me like a damaged headcase for it, then you know that it meant something, that it was a for-Harper hug. I'll be subtle."

"Riiight."

Beka hit him with one of his own pillows. "You'll be stunned by my subtlety!"

He hit back with the other. "Stunned? I guess, since your 'subtlety' is like a stun-rod between the eyes."

Her blue-green eyes glittered dangerously. "Oh, yeah?"

  


* * *

Dylan couldn't concentrate on the manifests now. He kept thinking about his confusion over Harper. He really had to resolve this if he ever wanted to get any work done.

Rommie's hologram appeared next to him. "Dylan? I need to know if I should intervene in the... situation occurring in Harper's room."

Situation? It might not be anything. He hoped it wasn't. "Report."

"I heard odd noises, like sex noises but not quite."

There was absolutely no reason for him to get a knot in his stomach over Harper having sex. "Why did you investigate? There are privacy protocols."

"It was the 'not quite.' It sounded a bit like a fight. Surveying the room revealed Captain Valentine and Harper involved in... something. They seemed to be laughing and throttling one another with pillows while Beka tried to mount him in the missionary position while they were both fully clothed. At least that's my best guess from what I saw. Is this an indication of insanity, a prelude to homicide, or a human custom I'm unaware of?"

"They were laughing?"

"Trying to. They seemed to be out of breath."

Dylan fought to keep a straight face. "It's a human custom called a pillow fight. As long as they're laughing and not trying to smother one another with the pillows, it should be fine. Leave them alone." He'd never heard of fighters being that close while doing it, but Harper had mentioned a lack of space in his life.

Laughing.

Dylan appreciated Beka's help.

  


* * *

The next day Dylan tried to keep that gratitude in mind when, out of nowhere, Beka opened her arms wide like she wanted a hug. "C'mere, Dylan."

"Captain Valentine, what the hell are you doing?" he asked. He really wasn't in the mood for this. Getting shot at tended to fray his patience. About the only good thing was that they'd been shot at while walking around station-side getting supplies instead of being attacked or invaded while on the Andromeda Ascendant, which seemed to be the usual, ship-damaging operating procedure for people out to make victims of them.

Watching Beka and Harper loot their defeated enemies' gear as "payment for wasting our valuable time" had produced decidedly conflicting feelings. Yet he hadn't stopped them. They'd looked so cheerful and feral all at once....

Even now, back on the Andromeda, Dylan's nerves still thrummed, and he had the scent of char in his nostrils. And Beka wanted to play games?

"No hug then?" Beka asked.

"No."

Beka cast a quick triumphant look back. Dylan turned to see Harper with his hand over his eyes trying to block out the sight.

Dylan couldn't believe this. "Mr. Harper, can I see you privately?"

Harper sighed. "Sure."

Beka's triumph turned to worry. "Dylan, it's--"

"I don't want to hear it right now. Harper, come."

As soon as Dylan found an empty room, one of the empty living quarters they'd stripped for parts and property they could sell, he directed Harper inside. Even the ceiling and walls had been torn into to remove struts to be used elsewhere. The surroundings didn't improve his mood. "What was that about?"

"Beka thinks she's being helpful."

"By mocking me?"

"No!" Harper shook his head. "Okay, what do _you_ think is going on?"

"I'm thinking you told her about yesterday and she found it really funny."

"I told her, yes, because I tell her almost everything. Because she usually knows when I have something to tell and doesn't lay off me until she gets it. But she didn't think it was funny; she thought it was sweet. Are you _mad_ at me about this?"

Dylan didn't know. Wait, he did know. "Yes."

Harper seemed to just about ignite with outrage. "You are one paranoid bastard, do you know that? Are you thinking this is some kind of trick now? That I'm the Maru's honeypot? Oh yeah, because I'm the most gorgeous, irresistible member of the crew. Uh-huh, we were just dangling me like bait in front of you waiting for you to grab and make a fool of yourself. Is that you think? Is that what you want to hear?"

It amazed Dylan to hear his darkest thoughts thrown back at him. And twisted around until they sounded completely ridiculous.

"Piss off," Harper said, shaking his head more emphatically. "She thought she could help me read your signals, but, guess what? It's impossible to read your signals!"

"Harper."

"No, I am not going to shut up. Nothing can make me." He sneered as Dylan grabbed his arm. "That won't do it."

"You're just making things worse!"

"_You_ are. I'm going to keep on going until you finally listen to me. What just happened didn't mean what you seem to want to think it means. All I want is for you to listen to me!"

Harper looked and felt so wound up that Dylan thought he might try to get a punch in. That familiar tension with all its strange echoes crackled beneath the embarrassment and anger Dylan felt. He pulled Harper in and kissed him hard.

Harper kissed back, as desperate and predatory, until he ripped himself away and leaped back. "That isn't going to shut me up either," he said huskily with the same feral sneer he'd had on his face as he'd picked off their opponents. He licked his lips. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know."

Harper moved back in closer. "You don't know?"

Dylan understood that, because he found himself meeting Harper halfway. Drawn there. "I don't know."

"I didn't think there was anything you didn't know, or so you want us to believe."

"You were wrong."

They stood close enough to breathe on one another. "Beka just wanted to see if you're the type of person who's prone to hugging people all the time. Are you?"

"No."

"Good," Harper said before he and Dylan pounced on one another.

Dylan ran his hands all over Harper's back and smelled char and ionized air in the spiky blond hair he was so vigorously nuzzling. Someone's shot must have gotten closer than he'd realized. Harper unbuckled Dylan's thigh holster with great efficiency. Clever fingers rubbing against him there.... Harper went to work on all the uniform fastenings as easily.

"This isn't the hardest thing I ever got anybody out of," Harper gasped between kisses.

Dylan didn't know how Harper had gotten the holster, straps, belts, and uniform jacket off without him noticing. And without him stopping his crusade to rumple everything Harper wore in an effort to get at some skin. He'd already removed the surprisingly heavy tool belt and dropped it somewhere, but everything else refused to come off. Pinning Harper to the wall didn't seem to stop the engineer from stripping _him_. Trying to kiss him senseless and thrusting against him didn't seem to help either.

"No," Dylan said and stopped. "No, not like this." Trying to hold Harper gently and at a distance was like trying to restrain a squirming wild animal.

"Not like what?"

"This is too rough."

"Rough is good. Rough is fine. I like it," Harper just about panted, trying to scrabble at Dylan's arms to get himself loose. Dylan saw vaguely circular bruises rising on Harper's neck already.

"No."

"No? What about what I'd like, huh? I'd like you to take your shirt off."

"No."

Harper knocked Dylan's arms away and dropped into a crouch, briefly rooting in the top of one of his boots before coming up with a small knife blade. "Easy way or hard way, Dylan? It's a nice shirt and all, but I just don't have the patience to play right now."

That shouldn't turn him on like this. Fascinated, Dylan watched light glitter off the thin blade and saw how easily this could go overboard, so he peeled his shirt off over his head... and threw it at Harper's face. Harper slashed at it, but it caught the knife and hit the floor out of reach. Dylan tackled him as gently as possible and knocked them down onto the mattress pad.

They struggled for a while, with Harper almost slipping out or knocking him loose a few times, but Dylan took advantage of being the one who was thinking clearly. More clearly. His lust, boosted by the adrenaline kick the earlier attack had left him with, kept trying to swamp him. Knowing that Harper also tended to have a mean kick, he carefully kept his engineer's legs tangled up and waited for all the effort to take its toll.

"You want it. I can feel it. What are you waiting for?" Harper asked as he slowed. "Why are you playing with me like this?" He closed his eyes. "I want it," he whispered, sounding too young and too old all at once and altogether too tired.

Once Dylan felt that he could do it without risking getting headbutted, he kissed the tip of Harper's nose, then lips. At least their writhing against one another felt less violent now, though much of the desperation remained.

"I don't want to hurt you," Dylan said between kisses and replied to Harper's nasty laugh, "Or you to hurt me either."

"Too late."

"I refuse to believe that."

"And refusing to believe in 'too late' has made such a difference in your case since we found you." Harper squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm sorry about that." Then he flipped then over until he was on top. "But not about this." He crossed his arms atop Dylan's chest and set his head atop them. Lying there but vibrating, tightly wound, looking at Dylan with such concentration and confusion.

Dylan stroked Harper's neck near the data port socket and felt that strain start to bleed away. As far as handy tricks went, this one would probably be getting a lot of use in the future.

Harper just about purred under the touch. "Not fair," he whispered, though he smiled. He drifted down more, getting comfortable, letting more of his body touch Dylan's. He could be so damned mercurial, but at least that gave Dylan a chance to salvage the moment and bring him out of the darkness.

"That's a side effect I can appreciate." The short hairs that brushed his fingertips seemed to be stroking him back. "Makes your port helpful at work and play."

Harper pressed his head against Dylan's fingers to get more. "More efficient, hey? You know, I kept getting offers to go to work as a virtual sex technician. Ridiculous money, if money's all you care about. People with ports have better judgment on crafting the sensual end of the session, since we internalize the data, experiencing it more directly. No middleman." His callused fingertips moved aimlessly across Dylan's bare chest in maddening circles.

Dylan finally managed to move enough of Harper's shirt away to get at some skin, so he let his fingers play along Harper's spine, staying soothing for now. "You didn't want to make ridiculous money?"

"Ridiculous money, but you never get to quit or go anywhere unsupervised since you're so valuable. Not a lot of people out there willing to get the ports implanted, so.... Anyway, I didn't get away from Earth to spend my life locked in a room putting together jerk-off fantasies for other people."

"What's the point of making the money if they don't let you out to spend it?"

"They don't tell you that when you sign up. I'm lucky enough to have friends in low places who know these things." He slithered up Dylan's body so they could kiss again. "You want me to craft a real scenario for you? No virtual about it. Right here, right now?" Harper snickered. "Okay, when my technique is making _me_ laugh, I need help."

Dylan sat up and grabbed Harper to prevent him from falling backward, leaving him sitting astride his thighs. Harper asked, "I should stop talking now?" as he unfastened Dylan's uniform pants and put his hand in, stroking.

"I think I'd die of shock if you did." They still wore their boots, and Harper still had most of his clothing on, which gave what they were doing a stronger charge somehow. So wrong.

Dylan understood that his idea of what was kinky and wrong would hardly register for anyone else, but he owned his vanilla self.

"That wouldn't be any fun."

"Glad you think so," Dylan said as he rocked into the grip on his cock. It figured that an engineer would be good with his hands. Strong, steady, and certain.

"Never tried necrophilia."

"I don't want you to start now. Get me loose?"

Harper smiled and made a corkscrewing motion with his hand that made Dylan gasp. "Get what loose?"

"Get my cock loose."

"Oh, that? Pants getting a bit too tight?"

Dylan grabbed the relevant portion of Harper's ass, then pressed hard, getting a satisfactory jump and gasp. "Yes. I'm sure you understand that."

"Oh yeah, but I want you to help me to understand it better. I'm a bit slow."

"I doubt that you're slow in anything." The next press made Harper's hand jerk and clutch in a way that almost made Dylan shoot off too fast. He didn't want to do that, though watching Harper rock, eyes closed, face smoothed out with pleasure, made him happy. "You'll have to understand the rest on your own."

"That's no fun."

"I see that I have to do this myself." Dylan took advantage of Harper's distracted air to pull himself out, Harper's hand still attached the whole way, then unfasten Harper's pants.

"I never figured you as the impatient type."

"I haven't even touched you yet. How the hell can you not be impatient?"

"I'm a higher class of being, Dylan. Live with it."

"Let's see how long that lasts." Dylan took hold of Harper's cock and did his own corkscrewing motion, which earned him a reciprocal action. At last.

It had been so long, too long, since he'd done this. Hot flesh sliding through his fingers as someone else's hands worked him. Trading air in darting mouth-to-mouth kisses. The give and take of two people moving with and against one another. Even the way their hands sometimes fumbled, tangling badly with one another, felt good. Like a connection. True to form, Harper did keep talking, though it mainly consisted of "Yes," "Right there," "Fuck," and "Dylan...."

Then Harper whispered hotly, "Fuck me, Dylan. I want you to," into his ear, and Dylan came hard and fast. His embarrassment only increased as Harper started to giggle.

Harper coughed. "Laughing at _us_, Dylan, not you. Sorry."

It made Dylan a little rougher than he had to be as he jerked Harper to a finish, but Harper seemed to enjoy it. At least the loud "Oh, hell yes" suggested that. His roughness only made him more embarrassed. So much for sex making their relations simpler. What an insane idea.

Dylan let himself fall back on the pad, bringing Harper down with him. Harper's warm, living weight lying across his chest felt very cozy. Surprising weight, yet it shouldn't be. Harper may only come to his shoulder while standing but was far from slight. Nicely compact was more like it.

Lust spent, Dylan noticed the room again. Tyr had ripped the support struts out of the ceiling and walls in a hurry, leaving long, ugly gouges. Necessary in the emergency Jeger's attack had created. They matched the mess of the rest of the room. The nature of some of the items still lying around suggested that it had been a cadet's quarters.

That cadet had been dead for nearly 300 years now, just like the rest of the High Guard crew.

It left Dylan with a chill. He felt like he'd defiled something by being here, doing this. Violent lust amidst the ruins of the Commonwealth.

Harper opened his eyes, took one look at Dylan's face, and started to roll away. "No," Dylan said as he grabbed Harper's arm, pulled him back up, and kissed him on the nose. "I'm just depressed by the room. It doesn't have anything to do with you." That didn't come out right. "I mean--"

"Oh. Yeah, it is a wreck, isn't it?"

Harper apparently hadn't noticed at first. Dylan often thought about what kind of surroundings his new crew was accustomed to, wondering at times if the dark, ugly, strictly utilitarian Eureka Maru might have been a step _up_ for some of them. Harper definitely gave him that impression.

Though watching Harper move around inside the Maru like it was his personal jungle gym never lost its appeal.

"Then let's get out of here," Harper said. "We could see what your recovery time is like elsewhere."

The last sentence rendered Dylan speechless. After this, he wanted to go again? Noticing that, Harper shook his head and tried to give him an out, saying, "Don't worry. I'm just--"

Dylan remembered the trust under the lust in Harper's voice as he'd asked to be fucked. "Let's. My quarters."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Harper grinned and rolled off him, his bounce back. Only then did Dylan realize that the shirt and pants he'd never gotten off of Harper were a mess. Harper shrugged as he tucked himself in and tried to neaten up. "Whatever. As long as Tyr doesn't see me walking the hallway like this, I'm fine."

As much as he hated the room, Dylan felt strangely unwilling to get up and dress. "Does he give you trouble?"

Harper found his tool belt and bent down to pick it up, giving Dylan a nice view. On purpose? "You know you dented the wall throwing this off me? Good thing all my tools are sturdy."

"It's heavy."

"Wimpy boy."

"I didn't say it was _too_ heavy."

"Yeah, defend your manhood while you can. But your toss was manly. Like I said, good thing my tools are made sturdy."

Dylan hadn't thought about that for even a second. "Harper, I'm--"

"Don't stress. If getting thrown around could break them, I'd be buying replacements all the time. Don't stress about Tyr either. He's Nietzschean, and giving trouble is in his genes. I just don't want him accusing me of cozying up to you to try to get preferment from the captain or some shit. That'd be a pain in the ass." Harper refastened his belt.

Of course Tyr would. Dylan didn't want the Nietzschean harassing any members of his crew, whether Harper figured that it was a fact of life or not.

"What was that thing you did station-side as you put your gun away?" Dylan asked. "That spinning thing." He'd offered Harper a force lance of his own, but Harper preferred a gun.

"What? This?" Harper unholstered, spun the gun in his hand, and reholstered it in his belt, then reached back lightning fast to have it out and spinning in his hand again before putting it away. "It was so hard to fumble the spin when Dutch was 'showing me how' to do this with a welding gun as he--it?--tried to distract me from opening up the Pax engine room. I almost burnt my toes off making my incompetence look right so we could get down to business. I've been doing this so long that it's like instinct now." Blushing a little, he crouched down and picked Dylan's shirt and his knife off the floor. He tucked the knife back into his boot and stuck a finger through a slash in the shirt before handing it back. "Sorry."

"No one will see it under the uniform jacket, and I'll get it mended later," Dylan answered, distracted, as he accepted his shirt. He'd seen that gun spin many times before, probably in a vid, so why did it make him feel so strange to see Harper doing it?

With the jacket on and fastened, you really couldn't see the slashes in the front of his shirt. From Harper's knife. The thought of which made him hot as hell. What was he getting into?

"Now you're talking. Looks like we're brothers under the skin after all."

Dylan shook his head as they left together to go to his quarters, certain that things would just get more complicated from here.

  


* * *

Harper walked beside Dylan, instinctively matching his longer stride and sometimes beating it. Just a normal quiet walk, captain and engineer. Nothing wrong here, and they had nothing to be guilty or secretive about. They didn't look debauched _at all_. Nope.

Oh, who was he kidding?

His peripheral vision noticed Beka crouching nearby, weapon in hand. It gave him a warm feeling to think that if anybody other than Dylan had dragged him away, she would have immediately kicked down the door to get him back. He gave her the "I'm okay" nod. Her eyes flickered over him and probably noticed everything. They lingered at his neck, and he realized that Dylan had stretched his collar out of shape. He wondered how big the inevitable hickeys were. Everything in her eyes and posture said that she wanted a report later and wouldn't take no for an answer. There was something to look forward to.

What would he say? What did he feel? Confused, claimed, owned, sated, reconnected, what? All? Somehow he doubted that she'd let him off the hook if he admitted that he didn't get it either.

Harper looked away before Dylan noticed where he was looking and what he was looking at. Not everybody reacted well to finding out that their first officers would be willing and ready to kick their asses if they stepped out of line.

That would keep Beka and Dylan working together well. What about him and Dylan?

Harper had long ago given up on the idea that there was some One waiting out there. Like in childhood. No such thing, so it was safer and smarter not to get too serious and too invested. Until the Maru, he hadn't even had friends he could trust not to stab him in the back the moment he turned it. So here he had this... thing with Dylan that had gone from a confusing but safe one step forward, two steps back dance to total freefall, too fast, too serious, too crazy.

Did that mean he would say, "It's been fun, but I have to wash my hair instead of going to your quarters for intense and insane sex, round two"? No. He needed this somehow, and that scared him worse than anything.

Had he really asked Dylan to fuck him? Not that he hadn't done that kind of thing before, but Dylan would probably see it as a meaningful thing, not just sex.

Which meant that Dylan would take it exactly the way he'd meant it at that moment.

He was so doomed.

"You're quiet," Dylan said, sounding concerned. He apparently knew by now that silence from his chatty engineer rarely boded well.

"I'm thinking. Be afraid, be very afraid."

"You don't have to do this."

"Don't have to think?"

"Harper."

"I want to do this." That was the really scary part. At least the feelings of terror, impatience, and familiarity that had been struggling inside him earlier felt more muted now. He'd barely felt like himself at times.

"And I want you to fuck me."

Whoa. "Aye-aye, Captain."

"Now you follow orders."

"I follow the ones that make sense."

"You follow the ones you like."

"If we do this right, you'll like it too."

"I expect to be satisfied."

"Oh, you'll get yours."

Dylan opened the door to his quarters, and Harper walked in, making it all a little more irrevocable. Harper saw only one way to get through this, so he pounced and tackled Dylan onto his bed. Turnabout was beyond fair, and Dylan didn't seem to mind. At all.

Harper wanted to suck on Dylan's neck a bit to continue the reciprocation, but the uniform collar got in the way, though he doubted it was designed to protect against hickey giving. Looked like he'd have to undress Dylan all over again, like that was a chore. But it would take a while, since there was so much of Dylan to undress.

"Are you aware that you're sizing me up like I'm loot, Harper?" At least Dylan sounded amused.

"You should be flattered. Loot is one of the things I value most." Dylan as loot, ill-gotten gains? Not quite. Almost. Harper didn't know, so he stopped thinking and charged ahead, undoing Dylan's jacket snaps with showy flourishes. "You could help."

Dylan just kept lying back and smirking. Serene. "You seem to be doing fine."

"Since you're in no hurry, I guess I could remove my tool belt myself--the right, safe way, mind you--while you lie there like a lump." An aroused lump, yes, but hell if Harper would let him stay with that superior calm.

Harper sat up and unbuckled as slowly as he could. If he shifted enticingly atop Dylan in the process, too damned bad. He couldn't look at Dylan while doing this and not laugh, so he closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of worn pleather slowly sliding through his fingers. And on the feel of the body beneath him squirming a little in frustration. As the belt came loose, he caught it with practiced ease and leaned way over to carefully deposit it on the floor. He overbalanced a little, but Dylan caught him and yanked him closer.

"Oh, _now_ you want to get pro-active?" Harper asked before Dylan kissed him hungrily. This, he liked. As he ran his hands through Dylan's hair, he wondered about its length, which seemed too long to be properly military. Dylan Hunt, hair maverick? Not that it wasn't really nice, soft hair....

Suddenly he was on his back looking up at Dylan. Okay, he was always looking up at Dylan, but on his back gave him a different angle. He felt a moment of twitchiness, but he'd decided he pretty much trusted Dylan. Especially when Dylan was doing this thing with his mouth to Harper's bared stomach before tongue-fucking his navel. Harper bucked and wondered how the hell he could have guessed.

"Is there a reason why it's so hard to get you out of your clothes?" Dylan murmured into his skin, and Harper didn't want to give the reason because it would only depress Dylan and start him back on his "ruin of the Commonwealth" thoughts. Dylan sat up and asked, "You think it would depress me, right?"

Did sex make Dylan telepathic or what? "Yeah," Harper said, "and you could always be depressed later. I'm not putting up with it now." He slid his hands through the slash in Dylan's shirt and stroked.

Dylan closed his eyes, leaning into the touches, then nodded. "That's fair." And removed Harper's messy shirt. Or tried to. It made a loud ripping sound as one of the shoulder seams gave.

Harper tried hard not to laugh. "Know your own strength much, Tex?"

If anyone could die of embarrassment, it looked like Dylan was reaching the terminal point. "Harper, I'm so sorry."

Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh. And Dylan was upset. "It's ancient, and I bought it second-hand. I'll shed no tears at its demise." Harper pulled it off over his head, scrunched it into a ball, and threw it. "See?" He let it go, reminding himself that he didn't have to stay mostly clothed to fuck and run anymore. No raids. Showed how often he got any that he still had that hard-wired into his sex instincts. He really had to do something about that. More sex could only help. "I can only hope that the light gleaming off my milk-white skin doesn't blind you. You know, few people get to see my chest. I should charge admission. Hell, we should get the media here for this event."

The flippancy and careless shirt-throwing seemed to get Dylan back on the right page; he was grinning. "No, this is a private showing." Dylan took advantage of the grand unveiling to run his tongue along one of the old scars, making Harper writhe.

"Aye-aye, Captain. Give those orders I like."

Dylan was too busy nipping at Harper's nipple and unfastening their pants to make any kind of tart verbal response. As it should be. Harper figured he could let Dylan take over things once in a while to make Dylan feel better, though not too often. Didn't want him to get too used to it. No way that supreme officer thing would be allowed in the bedroom until and unless Harper wanted it.

Right now, he did, and made it obvious by pushing up into Dylan's mouth and hand to get more. He plucked at Dylan's jacket sleeves and said, "Now who's wearing too much?" Not that he minded its snaps brushing his bare skin, but he was goal-oriented. Passing up the pleasant now for a better future.

Dylan released the nipple with a lingering lick, looked up, and asked, "You want me to stop what I'm doing?"

"Fuck."

"I'm not sure if I should take that one way or the other." While his hand continued to snake around in Harper's pants, which already didn't have enough room at the moment.

Pinned, aroused, and frustrated, Harper's mind raced as he thought desperately of ways to get loose. Dylan _would_ get more obnoxious and control freaky in bed. He really needed to be headbutted. Fortunately for him, he seemed to see the urge to headbutt in Harper's eyes, because he sat up astride Harper's waist and put his hands out and visible at his sides in ostentatious surrender before taking off the uniform jacket.

Dylan still had his slashed shirt on. Harper felt very proprietary about that slash, so he sat up and kissed the bare skin framed by it, smiling a bit at the gasp he got in response. Dylan's chest was a bit... hairier than he was used to, but he liked feeling Dylan's heart pounding against his lips. He liked the fingers stroking his hair too, while his hands enjoyed exploring Dylan's ass in the one situation where it being tight was a good thing.

And here they went again.

He didn't know how much longer he'd be able to stupidly make out like this before he completely ruined his pants. Besides, how could he fuck Dylan while they were both almost fully clothed? "If we undress ourselves, maybe it'll actually get done," Harper said and surprised himself by how husky his voice sounded.

"You'll have to let go of my ass first," Dylan replied, his voice sounding husky and amused.

"Aw. Do I?"

"It's your plan."

"Go ahead; hold that against me. Disengaging from your ass," Harper let go, "now."

"I see that I'll be learning all kinds of new, sexy terminology."

"If you start cracking all the jokes, I'll have to balance it by doing your brooding, and I really don't know how that would turn out, so let's not go there, okay?"

As soon as Dylan got off of him, Harper leaned down to start unfastening his boots. He owned a pair with buckles, so of course he had to pick today to wear the ones that laced up to mid-calf. Thank you ever so much, St. Murphy. The temptation to use his knife grew stronger and stronger.

Then Dylan put his hand down the back of Harper's pants. "Hey!" Harper said as his whole body reacted.

"Sorry." His hand kept caressing Harper's bared ass, though.

"You don't sound it." Who would have guessed that Dylan had so much of the imp in him? Pushing and pushing to see where the limits had been set, and who did that remind Harper of? Yeah, the guy he saw in the mirror. But Harper would have to do something to get that smirk off Dylan's face.

"Your pants were gaping as you bent over. I had to do something."

"If I shoot too soon...."

"Right." Dylan removed his hand, allowing Harper to get back to undressing.

Once Harper achieved full nudity, some of his nervousness returned. Because Dylan was naked too, and there was so _much_ to him as he sprawled there on the bed, larger than life. With adrenaline, insanity, and the rush of first lust spent in their last session, Harper was thinking again....

Then Dylan grabbed him, and thinking got pushed to the side. Dylan had only two hands, right? You wouldn't know it now. All that stroking and the rub and slide of their bodies against one another drove Harper crazy. He could come like this....

"Now," Dylan growled.

"We got...?"

"Tabletop. All there."

Harper had to stretch to get the slick since Dylan didn't seem inclined to let him go. No protection up there with it, though, which threw Harper's brain into a spin as EarthHarper thought "que sera sera" and SpacerHarper said "no way" since he knew he'd come off Earth with immune deficiencies and probably carrying some exotic (by spacer standards) bugs and AndromedaHarper thought he'd never been so checked-up-on in his life and surely Dylan knew, so.... A slap to one ass cheek brought him back.

"Hey!" Harper protested. "You have to be extra good to be allowed to do that."

"It's not my fault that you're so spankable. You think we could get going sometime this century?"

The little captain must have been impatient. Well, Harper had promised himself that he'd wipe the smirk off Dylan's face, so it was time. He slicked his fingers, found the spot he was looking for, and stroked in circles, smiling as Dylan's legs parted more. He had to clamp his other hand hard around his dick to make sure that the sight of his captain surrendering to him like this didn't get him off too soon. Once he knew he had Dylan's full, captive attention, he slid the first finger in, panting himself at the sounds Dylan made. Damn, this was a tight fit, and it looked like it would be a short ride once he got to the main event.

Dylan groaned and said, "Could we please get to it?"

"You sure? It looks like it's been a while for you, and I wouldn't want to--"

"About 304 years, and I still want it now. I don't mind if I feel this for a while."

Harper's cock twitched violently in his fist. "Okay." But he still put another finger in and scissored the first and second a bit, opening Dylan up more first. If he was going to claim this High Guard officer in the name of free trade, he intended to do it right.

Dylan writhed and growled, "Harper...."

What a rush of power. "Coming. So to speak. How?"

"Face to face."

Harper withdrew his fingers, slicked his cock up, and pushed in as gently as he could, thinking of things like the tariff rates at Borealis and the maintenance schedule for the Maru to try to maintain control. Anything to keep from coming now that Dylan's body was tightly wrapped around him in welcome. He stayed like that for a minute, heart pounding, breathing hard and in tandem with Dylan. Fuck, it felt incredible.

But his hips had their own ideas, and they started to thrust. He felt Dylan's cock get hard under him again as he started to move faster. He helped it along by fisting it, since he wanted to make sure Dylan enjoyed this as much as he did. And he was enjoying the hell out of himself. The heat, the friction....

And this was their second time. If Dylan had wanted Harper just to satisfy an adrenaline itch or as a sportfuck, the first time should have gotten it out of his system.

Then the whole ship rocked and sparks flew. No. Way.

"We're under attack," Dylan groaned, and all of his muscles clenched.

Harper didn't so much come as have orgasm wrung out of him by Dylan's body. He might have screamed--he wasn't sure--as it roared through him. His hand clenched hard on Dylan's cock in reflex, then released. Dylan came explosively.

The ship took another hit as they tried to catch their breath and regain consciousness. The look on Dylan's face broke Harper's heart. Guilt and apology and anger and.... Harper pulled out--he hadn't even gotten time to wallow, dammit--and breathed, "Go. I'll catch up."

Looking shocky and dazed, Dylan nodded, wiped down, and feverishly put his uniform on again, buckling his jacket as he ran out the door. As Harper quickly cleaned himself up and retrieved his own clothing, he tried to hold back hysterical laughter as he thought about how his old sex instincts actually still applied.

The stained pants were disreputable. Once Harper found his stained shirt, he saw that it looked exactly as if someone had tried to rip it off him. Totally unacceptable. He'd look like freebooter's booty. Yeah, he already smelled like freebooter's booty, but he didn't have time to do anything about _that_. Unwilling to go out there bare-chested, he found a shirt of Dylan's he could work with, then rolled up the sleeves and fastened his tool belt over it so the end of the shirt, a bit long on him, hid the stains on his pants.

His... eccentric tastes in fashion always had let him get away with a multitude of sins.

He did a quick mirror check to make sure he didn't look too embarrassing. He could pass, and his hair didn't look any more or less mussed than usual.

The ship rocked two more times, pissing him off. Fuckers messing with _his_ ship, his people? His nooky? They were going to pay, that's for sure.

As soon as he hit the hall, Harper yelled, "Rommie, where am I needed?"

"Dylan requests your presence on the bridge."

"Gotcha. On my way."

He really would have preferred a long, luxurious nap right now, but instead he poured the speed on and almost fell trying to stop himself once he got to his station on the bridge. Tyr's nostrils flared as he passed, prompting Harper to curse Nietzscheans all over again. Wouldn't be the first time or the last. Tyr's enhanced senses had probably noticed that Harper smelled like a whorehouse. Hell, he'd probably gotten a whiff of Dylan already, which meant that he'd be putting it all together. The forethought in putting on a shirt that had a high collar would be wasted.

And the damned thing was chafing the skin around his port.

Well, fuck it. Tyr could just add this to the long list of things he could harass Harper about.

"Harper," Dylan said, completely professional, and didn't have to go into any further detail to get Harper into the crawlspace to give Andromeda a boost. Had to love that teamwork.

Battle passed in a blur, as it usually did for Harper. These things happened so quickly out here, and how screwed up was it that he saw getting shot at as part of just a regular day again? He couldn't help grinning as their enemy blew himself to hell as they outsmarted him, but, hey, Beka whooped, since her piloting had been responsible.

Dylan shook his head but showed no obvious regret, having given the guy more than enough chances to reconsider. Dylan may have preferred to talk things out, but eventually even he understood that some problems could only be settled with lethal force. Actually, as annoying as Dylan's extreme idealism could be, Harper knew he'd hate for Dylan to lose that.

Besides, Dylan had people on his crew who could be cynical for him.

Even better, they'd just gone through a crisis situation same as they always had, with no stupid, moony-eyed, or distracted moments. Harper may have been looking at Dylan's ass a bit more than usual, but not so it got in anybody's way. Dylan had been Dylan, professional. They _could_ do this if they decided to take it further.

As Harper stood as close to upright as he could in the crawlspace, Beka's eyebrow lifted. So she'd noticed the shirt. She puckered her lips at him, while he rolled his eyes back at her.

"Good work, people," Dylan said. "Would have been nice if we found out where they were from, though. Dismissed."

Harper noticed Tyr eyeing him, but he just returned the glower. Like hell he would let a Nietzschean cow him now. Besides, he had repairs to do. The hostile ship may not have been too big a threat once they went on the alert, but it had gotten some damage in before that. Well, it was a cloud of debris now.

"Harper."

Harper turned in his crouch to face Dylan. "Yeah?" Then he realized where Dylan's eyes had focused. "I'm sorry about the shirt; I just didn't have time to get one of mine. I sweated this up a bit too. Hey, I'll clean it--well, I'll personally get Rommie to clean it--" Then Harper saw the heat in Dylan's eyes.

Dylan leaned in so close that Harper felt his breath. And he did smell like sex. "My quarters, later," Dylan said softly but intensely. "And don't change first."

Was he going to let himself be commanded around like this? Harper leaned closer, until they were breathing each other's air. "I don't let just anybody tell me what to do, so you better make it worth my while," he purred back.

"Count on it." And Dylan left.

Great. Now he had to reroute the blood flow back to his brain to fix the ship. For hours. Without going too fast or screwing anything up. Knowing what he had waiting for him at the end.

Piece of cake. He was the king of handling frustration.

Right.

"He treating you right?" Beka asked softly, crouching next to him.

"Yeah."

She smirked. "That stupid grin says yes too."

"Hey!"

"You're already wearing each other's clothes. What, did he rip your shirt off you?" She must have noticed him turning red even from her limited side view, because she purred, "Oh, Dylan, who would have guessed?"

"Beka, I love you like a sister, and it warms me to know that you would have kicked his ass if he'd done me wrong, but I have something waiting for me at the end of my repairs. I have to get everything done as quickly as possible."

"Oh. Oh!" She squeezed his shoulder. "No distractions. I get it. But I want to hear the highlights later. Especially the shirt-ripping."

"Don't know how much later that will be."

She grinned. "Got you. I'll leave you to it, Tiger."

Three hours later, Harper showed up at Dylan's door. With a change of clothes. Thinking ahead. He was an optimist, after all. "Dylan?" he asked into the comm.

The door opened, and Harper laughed as Dylan--barefoot, uniform jacket off, looking very hot and bothered--pulled him through it.

  


* * *

Dylan reflected that he really should be ashamed of himself. Grabbing his engineer, pinning him against a wall, and nuzzling him all over without even a hello first just wasn't him. Usually. Then again, he'd never had a lover show up on the bridge in his clothing--in part of one of his uniforms, no less--fresh from giving him the reaming of his life before. He could still smell sex and himself on Harper, as if he'd marked Harper as his own.

It had been a long three hours.

Harper smiled lazily as he writhed. "Looks like you really _don't_ mind me borrowing your shirt."

"I don't mind." Dylan tongued Harper's ear and smirked over the pleased noises Harper made. "But the length's not very good." Though the blue-black fabric clung to Harper, fitting closely, as it was meant to no matter who wore it.

"Yeah. Much too long, and it's weird in the sleeves."

"Mmm-hmm," Dylan murmured into Harper's neck.

"It bothers you that much, we can get somebody to fix it."

"We can discuss it later."

"Later's fine." As Dylan pushed his collar down and nibbled at his neck, Harper replied, "If I stick with you, I'm never going to be able to show my neck in polite company again, am I?"

"You know any polite company?"

"I could." Harper sighed happily. "Thanks for pulling the collar down. It chafed."

"And you wonder why I concentrate on your neck."

"Just don't stick your tongue into the port. Accidentally killed somebody that way once, and it gave me a bad electroshock like you wouldn't believe. Don't worry; he was a bad guy. That's why I didn't warn him. Oh, and that Perseid died too, but that was _not_ my fault."

A "bad guy" sucking on Harper's neck and dying from it, with no regrets from Harper. Dylan could guess the circumstances all too easily.

Harper took advantage of his distraction to do a 180, making Dylan the one pinned against the wall. "This is a no brooding zone," Harper said as he went down on his knees, unfastened Dylan's pants, and licked the tip of Dylan's straining cock. "Violators will be punished." Then he really started to suckle, his spiky blond head a bobbing contrast against Dylan's dark uniform.

Lost in pleasure, Dylan leaned back against the wall as his knees weakened. Harper may have had a scattershot attention span on many things, but when he focused on one thing, he gave it his all. His tongue and teeth worked Dylan over expertly, while his fingers stroked Dylan's balls and the base of his cock. He was really very good.

How did he get so good?

"Harper, no." With his tone of voice, it sounded more like "Harper, yes." He lightly pulled on Harper's flyaway hair. "Harper, no. I mean it."

Harper pulled back a bit to look up at him, and the sight of his cock between Harper's lips sent a jolt through him. Harper made a questioning sound that hummed along his shaft and almost made him come right then.

"I mean it," Dylan panted.

Harper rolled his eyes, opened his mouth, and let Dylan's cock slide off his tongue. "You have to be kidding me. What n--" Still kneeling, he shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. "Dylan, if you're going to grind to a halt every time you wonder about my past, we're never going to get anywhere. I've done things, and things have been done to me, and none of it can be undone. My past is part of the package, makes up who and what I am. Much as it sucks, I'm not me without it. But I guess it's better that I find out that it's going to be too big a problem now."

"Why now?"

"So we can stop before I make a bigger investment. I'm not real big on hurting myself."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"Then don't." Harper stood and retrieved the small, battered satchel he'd arrived with. "When you decide how you want to play this, you know where to find me." He looked unhappy but resolute. Resilient. But he'd have to be, to survive what Earth had become after the fall of the Commonwealth.

Would Dylan let those past events victimize Harper again by rejecting the victim for them? It wasn't right. "Harper."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry. I keep forgetting that things are different now."

Harper looked elaborately casual as he stood there. "Damned right."

"I'm not judging you. I'm just angry in your name and not showing it well."

"Again I say, damned right."

When they remained standing there looking at one another, Dylan asked, "Am I going to have to grovel?"

"Not until you mentioned it, no. But now that you put the idea into my head, I'm liking it."

Dylan went down on his knees... and pursued Harper across the room that way, surprised himself at the speed he managed. Harper might have done a better job of fleeing if he hadn't been laughing so hard. Dylan finally pushed Harper down onto the bed and climbed up with him. His knees hurt like hell, but the end result made the pain worth it.

"You didn't neaten up the bed in those three hours? You, Dylan?" Harper gasped, still laughing now and then.

"What was the point? Besides, I hoped we could pretend that we were never interrupted."

"I think I'm rubbing off on you."

"After all of that, you're not sure yet?"

Harper squirmed in an apparent attempt to get comfortable, sighed, and unbuckled his tool belt, moving until he was off of it. "Well, the fact that you didn't tuck yourself back in and refasten before chasing me around the room seems like evidence enough."

"Uh." The mental images Dylan had now frightened him. At least he wasn't hung up on ideas of a captain's dignity. Much.

But he still didn't tuck in and fasten up now.

"Letting it _all_ hang out and jiggle. There are some things people just aren't meant to see. Beka might like it, though. I wonder if Rommie is taping in here."

"She better not be. You're killing me, Harper."

"If I haven't yet, it's not gonna happen. And, hey, I like the little captain and the boys."

"The little-- Now I'll have to kill _you_."

"Promises. You know, you could use a mirror on your ceiling."

Dylan let his hand wander under the end of the borrowed shirt until it found Harper's bare stomach. He liked the way it made Harper shudder and smile to be stroked there. "Why?"

"'Why.' You just proved that the Commonwealth wasn't as civilized as you keep claiming it was. 'Why.' Honestly." Harper wiggled under Dylan's stroking hand. "I'm having a Buddha moment here. Rub the Harper's belly for luck? Not that it doesn't give me a big happy. And not just in a vulgar way."

Amazing how relaxed Dylan felt. Even the ache from their last bout felt pleasant. He was _well_ used. If he enjoyed playing with Harper, why shouldn't he?

All right, maybe he could rephrase that a bit.

Or maybe not. "Actually, I was wondering if I could get you to start kicking one leg this way."

Harper elbowed him. "Hey, I have _some_ dignity. I just ignore it when it comes to things I really want to do."

"Mmm."

"Mmm?"

"Now I'm wondering if I could get you into full uniform."

"For real or playtime? Because I have to tell you that if you're thinking for real, there's nothing spit-shined about me."

"I never noticed."

"Sarcasm shortens your life by at least ten years, you know."

"_You're_ telling me this?"

"I've resigned myself to a short but happily sarcastic life. Oh, and I am not doing the cadet/ensign/Eagle Scout thing."

Dylan moved his hand lower, under the waistband of Harper's pants. "Are you sure of that?"

Harper took a deep breath. "You know, when people used to trade sexual favors for a military commission, I don't think this is how it worked."

"Routine is the silent killer."

"You going to bribe the whole crew this way? Because I want to see the look on Tyr's face when you make the offer."

Knowing Harper's sensitivities regarding Magog, Dylan swallowed back a flippant response on how Rev would react. Harper might have found it funny... but he might not too. "I'm not going to do it to everyone. Just you."

"Ah. Then I'm special."

"Well, that and I'm getting older. I don't know if I could get it up for the whole crew."

"Maybe I shouldn't strain you too much then, Grandpa," Harper said, and Dylan saw the hesitance in his eyes. He'd made a move a few minutes before and been rebuffed.

Dylan would have to show him just how okay it was. "Feel free to strain me." And went back to Harper's neck.

Harper's laugh sounded breathy. "Again? Don't you have one of your own?"

"I'm just--"

"--fascinated by the port. Just don't think it supports anything like vibrating attachments, okay?"

"Fascinated by how sensitive it is, even--what?--years later?" Dylan tasted and smelled the sharp tang of metal and electricity along with Harper's skin there. He fully kept Harper's warning in mind, but playing at the edge of danger had its appeal, as did feeling Harper clench his fingers on Dylan and buck just from having Dylan's tongue pressing around the metal rim. His nuzzling let him feel some of the hardware hiding under the warm flesh.

It did fascinate him. Watching Harper slide the plug spike into it always seemed weirdly like a magic trick. It especially intrigued Dylan when Harper used it to commune with Andromeda, sending his consciousness inside through a direct line. Sometimes it seemed as if Harper had cast his body aside, other times like he was just sleeping, but sometimes... sometimes Harper seemed to enjoy the link in a sensual or even erotic way. At least the smile, purr of "Mmmmm," and slow, sinuous writhing suggested as much.

"Besides," Dylan said, returning to the conversation from his place in the gutter, "you're attached to it, and you vibrate."

"Oh... yeah."

"So you like having your neck and belly rubbed, and you're kneading me at the moment. Do you have any feline DNA?"

"Hell no." And Harper rubbed the side of his face against Dylan's head, then snickered.

"Funny guy," Dylan said against Harper's skin.

"Thank you for noticing," Harper gasped. "C'mon, Dylan, I don't want to come like this. Not yet."

Dylan backed off and took a look at what he'd done. Smiling giddily, panting, Harper looked dazed, with a bit of a glazed look to his eyes. He writhed a little as he tried to bring his fast, heavy breathing under control. "I know, I know," Harper said. "I'm easy." Taking advantage of the space Dylan had given him, he took the shirt off over his head, mussing his hair into a new direction. "I'm a cheap date." It let Dylan see more of the ancient scars, which age had turned almost as pale as the skin they were set on, he'd noticed earlier. That one a burn, that one a cut, and the texture of that one suggested that Harper had been dragged over something....

Then Harper folded himself so he could untie his boots while lying on his back. The show of flexibility distracted Dylan a bit from the darker turn his mind had taken. Harper was resilient, his scars a map of where he'd been. Part of the whole package, as Harper himself had said.

"Could I have some help here?" Harper finally asked. Only his pants remained. Dylan stared, weirdly touched by the offer. Why this one in particular, he didn't know. Maybe it was the look on Harper's face....

Harper raised an eyebrow and said, "All right. The Harper giveth, and the Harper taketh away," and started to unbutton from the top himself.

Dylan put his hand over Harper's to stop him. "Didn't say no."

"Didn't say yes. You have to move fast with me."

Dylan batted Harper's hand away and went to work, leaning in to kiss him now and then. "So impatient."

"I have a short attention span. I blame society."

With the pants open, Dylan could stroke down from Harper's navel to his cock. It amazed him that he could still feel this much lust after all the sex he'd already had today. "No underwear."

"I was in a hurry."

Dylan smiled. "Short attention span? I'll try to keep you entertained."

"Oh good. I hate to be bored." Harper fell back onto the bed, grabbing Dylan and bringing him down too. "Pants. Off. Now."

"Is that a command?"

"Is there any way to make it not sound like a command?"

"Do you want them off of you or me?"

"Both."

Dylan stopped stroking Harper long enough to whip his shirt off, but before he could start on his pants or Harper's, he was grabbed and soundly kissed. "You're not helping," he gasped, though he couldn't bring himself to unwrap his body from Harper's legs.

"I know. 'M sorry. I like your mouth."

"My mouth?"

"Or your lips. I may need more experimentation to know for sure if it's mouth or lips. I know that I like your tongue. Mmm. Dylan, my earlier offer still stands."

"Which one?"

"I still want you to fuck me."

Amazing how all traces of rational thought fled at those words. Harper laughed as Dylan yanked his pants off and quickly got rid of his own. "Is that a yes?" Harper asked.

"That's a 'what do you think?'"

"I think I'm going to like this."

What they were doing seemed more like wrestling than making out from the rolling and tussling, though the nibbling wouldn't be accepted as legal by any referee, but once Dylan had his fingers slicked and circling the right place, Harper settled down a bit. Though Harper still had Dylan pinned and flat on his back.

"Tease," Harper gasped as he wantonly pushed back onto the fingers.

"Are you done gnawing on me like I'm a rations stick?" Not that Dylan _minded_, but he was being called a tease....

"After all the marks you left on me? No."

"Really." Dylan thrust a finger in, which made Harper rock and their cocks slide against one another in a way he found very satisfying. Actually, he liked all of that warm, moving weight covering him.

"If this is punishment, I think I need more. I'm feeling... really unrepentant."

"Is that what you're feeling?" Dylan slid another finger in and appreciated the smile it won him.

"I think I need to be punished with something bigger." Harper disengaged himself from Dylan's fingers and slowly settled himself down on Dylan's cock, smiling fiercely all the while. Stunned by it all, Dylan watched a bead of sweat roll down the side of Harper's face from his hairline. "Much better."

"Oh yeah," Dylan gasped as he bucked up into Harper's heat, "much better."

Then Harper started to screw himself up and down, which may have been one of the hottest things Dylan had ever seen, but made Dylan feel like he was being neglectful. He remembered the earlier confession of impatience and a short attention span and figured that him lying back and marveling at the sight of Harper impaled atop him must have taken too long. Thus, he couldn't be offended.

But he wanted to give at least as good as he got, if not better. Remembering how good it had been when Harper had fucked him only hours earlier, the burn, the feeling of being filled and _together_ with him, he couldn't do anything less.

Dylan smacked Harper's hands again and thrust up as he wrapped his hand around Harper's cock. The hissed "yes!" he got in response told him what he needed to know, so he set a fast, hard rhythm with his hand and cock. He'd missed this so much, the weight, movement, heat, and affection of it, the excuse to get and be totally messy.

Harper moaned, writhed, _still_ talked, and stroked him back, looking wild and desperate and very hungry. When Dylan put his hand up to ruffle Harper's crazy hair, Harper rubbed the side of his face into it and whispered, "Missed you, missed this...." then came hard, shouting, looking exhilarated, his whole body nearly seizing up in it, wrenching Dylan over with him. Dylan felt it start in his toes and rip through him on his final, ragged thrust.

Collapsing, they gasped together for a while, with Harper lying on top of Dylan, the two of them making a happy, messy heap. Harper's hair brushed Dylan's chin back and forth before he said, "I guess I should have told you not to expect as much the second time."

It took Dylan a minute to actually get any words out. "What? That was--"

"Oh, yeah, _that_. That... was great. Excellent great. 'We have to do it again sometime as soon as possible' great. But... I meant the lights and explosions and ship rocking. I can't... do that every time."

"I should hope not." He wanted to give back better than he got.... "I see I'll have to fuck you harder next time. You shouldn't be coming up with awful quips this soon."

Harper's shocked laugh warmed Dylan, especially since he could feel the vibrations of Harper's amusement all through his body. "Unbelievable. I've created a monster."

"I'm glad you're accepting responsibility for that, because I won't."

"Sure. I can let you believe that your sense of humor is my fault. You can be responsible for everything and everybody else." Harper nuzzled Dylan's chest and drowsily said, "I could sleep like this."

"Then why don't you?"

"Mmm. Don't mind if I do." He closed his eyes and smiled as Dylan placed a proprietary hand on the small of his back.

Once Dylan felt Harper's breathing and heartbeat slow into sleep, he let himself doze too.

  


* * *

//I sit on a blanket near a campfire soaking in the warmth and the sight in front of me. Harper spins two antique guns with an effortless grace, the fringe on his jacket sleeves flying with the motion. Beautiful.

//But this is and isn't Harper either. Wrong face and body again, though this younger body keeps registering as wrong in different ways. Something about the curves and angles of his skull and the glimpses of his neck I get above the dusty bandanna he wears around it. Firelight catches on the dark blond hair that straggles out from under the old, wide-brimmed hat he has on.

//For whatever reason, he'd helped us trap some cattle thieves who'd attempted to escape justice by fleeing over the border, and he apparently expected no reward for helping strangers who weren't even his countrymen. He may have been an American gun-for-hire, but he seemed to be one who had a sense of honor and law.

//Finally he reholsters the guns with one last spin and briefly bows, grinning. Despite being barely more than a boy, not even ready to shave yet, he has the beginnings of crow's feet around his eyes, the ones people gained from squinting in the sun as they rode across open prairie and desert vistas.

//As I applaud his talent, I say, "It's a good thing Thom wasn't here to see that, or he'd want to keep you as a pet." It's not my voice.

//"Doesn't he realize that you can't domesticate an American?" Harper replies in a husky voice that, despite the deeper register it's been forced into, obviously belongs to a woman.

//Even stranger, I realize it, but the me sitting at that campfire doesn't.//

Dylan woke up completely confused. What the hell had that been about?

"What are you doing?" Harper asked sleepily.

Dreaming about you being a cross-dressing cowgirl, Harper. "I think I'm having a nervous breakdown," Dylan said.

"You're about due, but I can think of better ways to spend your time." Harper nuzzled the length of Dylan's arm, drowsily murmuring, "You're still here. Haven't gone 'way...."

"It's _my_ room." It looked like he'd have to get accustomed to Harper's fits of strangeness. He found that he really didn't mind.

"Mmmm. Still. Glad you're back."

Dylan stroked Harper's unruly blond hair, burying the weirdness of the dream under this comfortable intimacy. "Me too, Harper. Me too."

 

### End

 

**Note:** So what's up with ["Moment by Moment" and "Magnetism"](http://viridian.shriftweb.org/ds-andromeda.htm)?


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